30 Days Wild: Days 13 – 15

It’s been a while since I’ve posted as I’ve been rather busy indulging in #randomactsofwildness for 30 Days Wild.

Lovely as it is to get out in nature , it’s tough to fit in nature, detailed blogs and my freelance work – particularly as I’m currently preparing decor for Latitude Festival.

Luckily, the piece I’m doing for Home Live Art is a utopian, nature-themed crafting tent, so 30 Days Wild doubles as inspiration.

Day 13: 30 Days Wild

And so it was that, on Day 13, I investigated nature themed art. To be fair, this mostly involved drooling over William Morris art online, as he’s the king of natural art for me (with some lovely politics to go with it: we need another Arts and Crafts movement).

However, Heironymous Bosch comes a close second, for the wonderful complexity and glorious humour in his work (possibly inspired by ergotism)

I am also enraptured by the idea of virtual reality Bosch experience.

I’ve always loved tech as much as nature, because it creates the future.

Naturetech

There are so many things we can learn from nature, from solar powered trees that use leaves to catch the sun to ones that grow plants.

I’m currently a little obsessed by mushroom-to-tree communication, explained brilliantly in this article, intriguingly headlined, ‘Plants Talk to Each Other Using an Internet of Fungus’.

To be fair, I’ve long loved slime mould so it’s no wonder that mushrooms have caught my imagination – watch John Bonner’s videos and you’ll love slime mould too. Team it with art/tech and fun things can happen.

The Future of Art

Anna Dumitriu is a contemporary artist whose work I adore. She describes herself as, “A British artist whose work fuses craft, technology and bioscience to explore our relationship to the microbial world, biomedicine and technology.”

Well, microbes are nature too – and her work is groundbreaking stuff that fits wonderfully into the brave new world of VR, AI and alternate realities.

In short, over the course of my artistic inspiration binge, I realised that art is evolving but nature has as much to teach us today as it ever has, and we should respect it more than we do.

Day 14: 30 Days Wild

Feeling inspired by all the art, I wrote a nature-themed poem.

Spring is in the air.

Winter seeds push through the soil.

It is time to grow.

Day 15: 30 Days Wild

It was time to get outside. My passion for close up nature photography is growing fast. Here’s the evidence.

I can’t understand how I’ve missed so much beauty in the past. Now, whenever I’m out, I find myself looking for the tiny details: the ‘out of place’ flower or bloom that looks like a hug.